


You

by atheling



Series: Lancelot and Gawain's Excellent Adventures [5]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Cats, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheling/pseuds/atheling
Summary: Gawain gets Lancelot a cat so he won't be lonely.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Series: Lancelot and Gawain's Excellent Adventures [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2105058
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	You

“I’m not dying,” Lancelot repeated, watching Gawain tear the remains of a fine shirt into strips. “I’m just lightly perforated.”

“Famously, a prelude to dying,” Gawain countered. But from his relative lack of insanity, he was at least nominally convinced that Lancelot was not in immediate danger of exsanguination. “Hold still.”

“I’m holding.” 

They had encountered trouble on the road. This shouldn’t have been an issue, they often encountered trouble on the road, and proved troublesome themselves. But this time Gawain had been on a walk and Lancelot had been asleep. Now he was awake and regretting it, but didn’t protest as Gawain eased down on the bed beside him and placed a careful hand on his chest. “I need to leave tomorrow. For the time sensitive quest.”

“Oh yes. That,” Lancelot agreed, suddenly thinking less about his wounds and more about Gawain's hand. “I’ll manage.”

Nodding agreeably, Gawain withdrew his hand, and Lancelot watched it go with some sadness. “Oh, you’ll manage fine. But I’ll be a terrible wreck, you know, as I often am.” 

_ Wreck  _ was not a word Lancelot would have applied to Gawain. He was  _ Gawain.  _ He fought things on the regular that Lancelot had only encountered once or twice, and didn’t think anything of it. He only needed help when he got kidnapped, which happened on occasion. He wasn’t a wreck. “You’re very— mm. Suave. Not a wreck.”  _ Oh God. Bad. Bad. Die. Crawl into a hole and decompose. _

“Well thank you, I try to be,” Gawain said. His air was breezy, but his fingers were tapping nervously on the sheets and his eyes kept darting around the room. They were in the home of a local man, well off enough to have a spare room for royal guests but not enough to be anyone they’d heard of before. A tense and hazy midnight ride had taken them to his door, and to his hospitality on which they now trespassed. 

“Would you like some wine? Or— I could get another blanket,” Gawain offered. It sounded more like a request. 

“Uhm— just the bandages,” said Lancelot, trying not to say that what he really wanted was for Gawain not to leave. “On my body, I mean. To stop the bleeding.”

“Right! Right. I just meant for— nevermind. Bleeding. Some sense of urgency should be felt,” Gawain ripped the final strip of cloth as if the former shirt had personally wronged him, and armed with bandages returned to his attentions. He’d already cleaned the area, created and applied a very curious smelling poultice, and packed the wound, all of which left Lancelot with a breathless warmth he could charitably attribute to blood loss. 

Resisting the urge to close his eyes as Gawain touched his back, he felt the tips of his fingers pinning the bandage in place like the kisses of red hot pokers. In a bid to avoid eye contact as Gawain leaned in closer, Lancelot flicked his eyes down, which only meant a careful and unwanted study of Gawain’s lips, pursed in concentration. He inhaled sharply, and even that betrayed him because now when he should be wincing in pain he was fighting a need to tell Gawain his hair smelled nice and looked soft. Like a normal person. 

“Is that too tight?” Gawain asked, voice low and quiet, since they were too close for anything louder.

“No,” Lancelot breathed out on the tail end of an aborted gasp. “Not too tight.”

“Nor too loose?”

“Nor too loose,” he repeated, and could have been speaking Greek for all he knew. 

Gawain pulled back. Damn it. Thank god. Damn it. 

“I’ll be leaving early tomorrow,” he said, as though he wasn’t holding Lancelot’s heart in his hands. Metaphorically. “But, uh— well— there’s something I have for you. Until I get back. Or longer, uhm, if you fall in love.”

“Oh, Lord,” Lancelot exclaimed thoughtlessly.

Gawain grimaced. “Well this one is rather old for you. You can certainly do better, but I suppose I won’t be one to get between you are true love.” 

“What— what is happening?”

Gawain shrugged in modest embarrassment. “Not my finest wordplay. I stole a cat.” 

Lancelot bolted upright, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through his side. “You  _ what _ ?”

“Sit down!” Gawain said frantically. “I won’t give you your cat if you don’t sit down and heal politely.” 

Lancelot’s brain went places and he blushed furiously. “Heel?” he squeaked. “Uh? Uhm?”

With an unreadable look, Gawain shook his head. “I think you’re a bit delirious.” 

“Yeah,” said Lancelot, trying to chalk it up to that. “Uh, yeah. Cat?”

Gawain brightened, and produced, from Lancelot's admittedly unclear perspective, a furry shape from thin air. “I found her. To keep you company while you recover, you know?”

Saying this, he placed the fuzzy creature on the bed, where it resolved itself into a sleepy looking white kitten. The creature blinked blue-eyed at Lancelot, yawned, and curled back into the draconic circular slump Gawain had presumably interrupted. 

Lancelot melted. It was the only word for it. He felt as if his heart, which previously had been in Gawain’s capable hands, had been set gently down and left to dissolve next to this small animal. Carefully, he reached out one finger and stroked down its forehead. It purred, twitched an ear, and went back to sleep. “I— oh my God. I don’t know what to say. You  _ stole  _ it?”

“Not from its mother,” Gawain said reassuringly. “It’s old enough. I spent my whole childhood following street cats around so I can tell.” 

“Okay,” said Lancelot, accepting this, “that’s fine then. You’re— you’ll be gone, then? How long?”

He frowned. “However long it takes. Hopefully only a few months; long enough that you’ll be fit to ride when I get back, but ideally not so long that you’ve gotten bored and left without me to hide in the wilderness and ambush unwary travellers.” 

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Lancelot wistfully. The cat made a noise and it was very loud, so he wavered his hand towards it in case it wanted something to attack. It seemed to still be asleep. “As tempting as it is. Gawain, I— thank you.”

“Well you know I—” Gawain smiled softly, almost uncomfortably. “I’ll rest easier out there knowing there's someone capable keeping an eye on you.”

The next morning, through a vague fog of sleep and dreams, Lancelot woke briefly to find Gawain carefully dressing himself. He blinked, decided on keeping his eyes closed because it was easier, and murmured, “Please don’t die. I would be very sad.”

“I’ll try my very best. I would hate to upset you,” Gawain answered, after what Lancelot’s half awake brain sensed was a pause but couldn’t quite be sure. As further evidence of time being far from lucid, the next instant Gawain was gone, and the room was brighter, and someone was poking him repeatedly with very small pins. He forced his eyes open. The mid-morning sun streamed through the room’s only window, and there was a sensation on his hand like it was being cut open by a miniature sword bridge. Glancing down, he saw the kitten attached to his fingers like a clamp. Its teeth moved back and forth across his skin, and into his skin as well, but it looked very cute and it would be a pity to move it. “Hey, you,” he said. “Having a good time?”

As if guilty at being caught, the kitten released the gnawed upon finger and licked the spot where pinpricks of blood were blooming, with an impossibly tiny pink tongue. “Mrp,” it said. 

Lancelot grinned. “Yeah? Mrp?” Then, as an afterthought, he moved one finger slightly to poke the kitten on the nose. “You can keep munching if you want. I don’t mind.”

But, as if his lack of resistance diminished the fun, it abandoned the hand and bounced away, across what must to something of that size been a tournament arena sized ocean of sheet, in search of other prey. 

“Alright, suit yourself.” Lancelot stared at the ceiling. It had not escaped his notice that the bed was feeling strangely large, and the room strangely empty, and that there was no one to prod him awake were he to fall asleep again. He tried not to think about this. It wasn’t the sort of thing one should notice about one’s professional friend who was a ladies’ man and not a men’s man, and particularly not a Lancelot’s man. “Well, I’m going to sleep again,” he decided. “You’re welcome to try to eat me in my sleep.”

Instead of attempting once again to make him a meal, Lancelot felt as he drifted off that the kitten had plopped itself down beside him, coiling around his upper arm. Before he was completely out, he felt the vibrations of its impractically loud purrs echoing into the bedsheets. Then he was asleep once more. 

Two weeks passed and Gawain did not return. The kitten grew; looked different every day, looked gangly and lopsided and a bit like a furry clothes hanger. Its favourite hobbies were biting, clawing, attacking, and napping. Lancelot approved, as all these were things he enjoyed as well. 

He healed. He went for walks. He sat in his room and played with the kitten, which was only ever referred to as  _ you.  _ And still, Gawain did not return. Lancelot tried to be the sort of person that took things as they came, a day at a time. Sebile had told him to, because otherwise he would explode and go mad in the woods again. Still, it was hard not to line up all the days he’d taken at a time in a row and see the number of days. There were things one tried not to reflect upon; how two weeks could feel so long, whether Gawain was well, thinking of him, thinking of charming ladies and damsels he was surely off rescuing somewhere. 

“I need to stop doing that,” he reflected to the cat. It stared at him, blinking balefully out of its slumber. “Feeling, uhm, what’s the word?”

It didn’t tell him. 

“Resentful! Thank you.”

“Murrm,” it said, and stretched into petting range. He obliged, staring at it with vague fondness and sinking back into reflection. Sometimes he read too far into things, things like offhand comments and lingering glances and kitten gifts. But that was just Gawain. He was kind, in a way that wasn’t obvious at first glance. He was nice, and then he was not, and then under that he was again, but differently. He liked everyone. Lancelot wasn’t so self-flagellating as to say he wasn’t special— he was special in the way true friends were special, but not in the way  _ best  _ friends were special; at least he didn’t think so. Not special in the way Gawain was special to him.

But still, Gawain worried about him, or said he did, and he didn’t lie to Lancelot. He scratched under the cats chin, and it purred louder in contented encouragement. There were many cat thoughts he had he wanted to share with Gawain, even though they probably weren’t very funny or interesting, because Gawain seemed to appreciate talking to him no matter what. That didn’t mean much, Gawain was nice to everyone. But at the same time it did sort of mean a lot. Ah, thinking. How complicated and tiresome. 

“You don’t think much at all,” Lancelot said to the cat, which purred in smug agreement. He wondered vaguely if he should name it. “Should I think of a name for you?”

It kept purring, but it did that a lot and wasn’t necessarily related to anything Lancelot said. “Better just keep calling you  _ you _ ,” he decided. “Practical.”

Eventually, Gawain returned. He had gained a new set of clothes, a new ring, and a new sword. His hair was tangled and the circles under his eyes dark. Still, his face split into a broad grin when he saw Lancelot. “Knock knock,” he said, although he had already entered the room. “It’s great to see you.”

“Yeah,” Lancelot said, too relieved to consider whether it was the appropriate response. “Yes. I’m glad you— you got a new outfit and everything. That’s always a good sign. I uh, didn’t die. Also.” 

“How’s the cat?” said Gawain, letting his pack fall to the floor and meandering across the room to fling himself onto the bed.

“Long,” said Lancelot thoughtfully. “It stopped getting bigger proportionally a few weeks ago and now only its legs grow.”

Gawain nodded. “That happens. What about Lancelot? How’s he doing?” 

“Mm. Bored and lonely,” he said, before he could talk himself out of being honest. Then, to really seal the deal, he said, “I missed you.”

“So did I,” Gawain said, almost too quickly. “I mean, I was concerned for you. And missed your company. You make things much more interesting, that is.” 

“By attracting people who want to kill us?”

“Exactly! It simplifies things. And you know you’re— you’re very nice to talk to.” 

“Oh! Oh. Uh— cool!” 

There had, in the history of the universe, probably been less stylish responses to such comments, but Lancelot could not at that moment envision any. He blushed and prayed Gawain wouldn’t take offense. Gawain, for his part, seemed not to have noticed anything wrong, and had stretched back over the bed to flick at the cat’s ears. “Have you killed anything yet? Huh?”

“Three sparrows and a finch,” Lancelot reported proudly. “I saw her take one of them right out of the air.” 

“Aw. Little monster. Soon you’ll be moving on to eating annoying squires, I’m sure.”

“I’m fit to ride, now,” Lancelot said, after a brief but not awkward pause of observing the cat. “Are you— you look tired. Would you prefer to rest here for a few more days?” 

“I’m always tired,” said Gawain vaguely. “I’ll be fine. It would be good to be home.”

Lancelot looked at him, trying to appear analytical and not warmly concerned. He concluded that Gawain would be alright with a night's rest and some attention (he was like a plant that way) (Lancelot did not know anything about plants) so it was best to go along with it. “It will. I— I want to bring the cat. I’m responsible for it, Gawain.” 

“Of course you’ll bring the cat,” said Gawain, looking a bit affronted. “I didn’t bring you a cat assuming you would be only mildly happy about the cat. I brought you a cat knowing you would fall obsessively in love with it.”

Lancelot smiled, almost embarrassed. “You do know me too well.” 

“No such thing,” said Gawain, very softly, almost as though he had not meant to say it. For a second Lancelot wondered— but no. Gawain said himself he didn’t care that much about anyone.

(Lancelot knew he was lying.)

“The cat will attack you in your sleep,” Lancelot said, which meant he was asking if Gawain would be staying in this bed tonight. 

“I look forward to it,” said Gawain, which meant he was. “One of my favourite hobbies is being naked and getting attacked by knives.”

“Ah!” Lancelot blinked. “Ah,” he said again, more quietly. “Oh, I see. Good. Good.” He just wouldn’t think about that. 

“Sorry, I don’t want to— make you uncomfortable.” Gawain broke his gaze, reached out to touch the cat in consolation, flinched when his hand met Lancelot’s. “Fuck. Sorry. I keep— saying the wrong things.”

“No—” Lancelot said quickly, too quickly, from the expression that flashed guiltily across Gawain's tired face. “No I mean— I’m not uncomfortable. You don’t make me uncomfortable.” 

“Oh. Well—” His face split into a grin, as though to indicate nothing he said meant anything, unless Lancelot wanted it to. “Well, maybe I should, everyone knows I’m a lying cheat.”

“What?” Lancelot asked, split between concern and confusion.

“Mrp?” The cat asked, as if wondering why they were talking about Gawain now and not paying attention to it. 

But the moment had broken. Gawain sagged back against the mattress, trailing a finger down the cat’s forehead, and said, “Yeah, kitty, I stole you. Thieved you. With lying cheatery. Mhm.”

“And— And am very glad you did.” Lancelot watched him play with the cat a moment, filled with bittersweet affection as only a half asleep person could be. “Are you planning for us to leave early tomorrow?” 

“Yeah. Best be back soon, I think. I miss Guinevere.”

“Need help with your armour?” Lancelot asked, because there was no polite and platonic way to say come to bed, I missed how you keep out the cold. 

“Always,” said Gawain, but he didn’t move, just stayed lying on the bed, vaguely petting the cat, staring up at Lancelot with wide eyes and a strangely serious expression.

He searched for something to say, glance lingered questioningly on Gawain's face, sure there was something he was missing. “I feel as if there's something I’m missing,” Lancelot admitted. “I’m sorry.” 

“Oh, sorry, sorry, I suppose I have to sit up.” He forced himself to sitting, abandoning the cat to its disgruntled yowls. “Much appreciate your help.”

Offended by the jostling of the bed this caused, the cat stretched, shot Gawain a surly look, and scurried off somewhere to torment dust bunnies and sleeping beetles. It would be back. Lancelot had other much more immediate concerns, namely leaning in close to Gawain to get the tricky strap on his shoulder, and feeling his face heat up. 

“This is nice. It’s like a hug.” Gawain yawned. “If hugs were very poky.”

“Uh huh.”

Neither of them, it can be said, were entirely awake, and the usual shock of contact had settled into a dull warmth, pinpricks in his cheeks and fingertips as they managed, piece by piece, to divest Gawain of his fancy new armour. 

Gawain watched him the whole time, his gaze open and almost sad. When his armour was all stacked carefully at the foot of the bed, he said, “What’s the cat called?”

“Oh, I— I kept it simple. Call it you,” Lancelot said, still trying to puzzle out Gawain's mood. “You can— if you think of something better.” 

“No, no,  _ you _ ’s perfect. You’re a perfect cat owner. Pets. No real name. Endorsing murder. You're perfect.”

Lancelot opened his mouth to say something flustered, closed it. “I— I think you’re really very tired after all.” 

“So tired,” murmured Gawain. “If I don’t take a nap right now I will fall asleep on you. That’s my threat.”

“That’s alright,” Lancelot said, perhaps too readily. “I mean, I mean the cat does that, too.” 

“On all levels except physical, I am a cat.” 

“I— I’m coming to see that, yes,” Lancelot agreed, after one muffled peal of laughter. “It’s charming.” 

“Hmm,” said Gawain, but his eyes were closing, and he might not have heard.


End file.
